Django Unchained

Director Quentin Tarantino follows up his Oscar-winning war homage Inglourious Basterds with this playfully audacious mix of spaghetti western lore, Teutonic legend, blaxploitation stylings and revisionist American history. It's a wildly thrilling swagger through the good, bad and ugly sides of slavery, with Jamie Foxx as the slave-turned-bounty hunter who's on a mission to rescue his wife from a brutal Mississippi plantation owner (played by Leonardo DiCaprio on top villainous form). Ferociously overindulgent in that trademark Tarantino way, but acceptably so because he knows which genre movies to lovingly recycle (Blazing Saddles and Mandingo to name but two), the film is blessed with often enthralling dialogue, surreal plot twists, a film buff's dream of a supporting cast and a soundtrack that acts as another melodious Morricone tribute. Christoph Waltz (who deservedly won an Academy Award) gives a brilliant performance of ruthless charm personified as Django's German mentor, but the real surprise here is Samuel L Jackson's skin-crawling portrayal of DiCaprio's manipulative head servant.